Sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY!

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Esbee links to the trailer about the History Channel show filmed at Bowman Gray last summer and set to debut this coming Sunday.  Looks entertaining and I'm sure it will be the kick in the pants I need to finally get me out to the track next summer.  I feel somehow un-Winstony for living here five years and not getting out there even once.  This despite the fact that a friend of mine who goes there religiously once described the atmosphere thusly (I'm paraphrasing):  "It's great.  There are all kinds of women there wearing halter tops and no bras, and they really should be wearin' bras since their tattoos get all distended."  If that's not a ringing endorsement I don't know what is.

Here's the trailer.  Show debuts on the History Channel at 10 p.m., Sunday, January 10.

For You Wake Hoops Fans

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Remember how bad you felt when Wake lost to William & Mary?  Well, this might help you feel a little better.  The current RPI rankings have William & Mary at #2 in the country behind only West Virginia. Wake is ranked 29 and Duke, at #3 is the only ACC team with a higher RPI.

As a George Mason alum I'm intrigued that the CAA has three teams in the top 40: William & Mary at #2, Virginia Commonwealth at #14 and Old Dominion at #39.  The ACC only has Duke and Wake in the top 40, but it has NC (49), Clemson (50) and Florida State (51) just below.  Sadly my alma mater, the boys who were seconds away from beating Villanova (15) at the beginning of the year and played Georgia Tech (65) tough, yet managed to recently lose to Radford (89) by 27 points, is ranked #131.

Unresolutions

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Since I never seem to succeed in fulfilling my new year resolutions I've decided to try listing my "unresolutions" in the hope that I succeed in not unresolving.  Or whatever.  Anyway, they are:

  • Gain weight.
  • Get out of shape.
  • Lose money.
  • Lose friends and influence no one.
  • Break everything I touch.
  • Fail miserably at everything I do.
  • Celebrate my laziness.
  • Live slothfully.

I think that covers it.  Here's to a terrible 2010!

Hall of Fame Redskin Twitterers

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I've been on Twitter forever, but you'd never know it by the anemic number of people who follow me and whom I follow.  One thing I've never done is follow celebrities.  Not sure why, and it's not like I have a policy against it, but I've just never been interested in what famous people have to say in 140 characters or less.  Hence I was surprised today to learn that some of my childhood heroes are active on Twitter.  People like two Redskins from the golden age (1980s) who are now in the NFL Hall of Fame, John Riggins and Darrell Green.

Yep it's interesting that they're out there, but not interesting enough for me to follow them.  It's not them, it's me.  I like to follow people who link to interesting information or are active in my (physical) community so there's simply nothing of interest that these two or most other celebrities will write that will be of any interest to me at all.  I'm also afraid that if I start following celebs I'll never get anything done.

Not All Yurts Are Created Equal

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Last summer our family spent a long weekend staying in a yurt near Charlottesville, VA.  Our yurt was luxurious and featured a nice kitchen, a nice bathroom, air conditioning, and HD television.  Although it looked very much like the yurt occupied by the family featured in this NY Times story the similarities ended there.  These folks have no running water and thus no indoor plumbing, their heat is provided by a wood burning stove and they fashioned a root cellar out of an old refrigerator. They're not totally roughing it though: they have broadband.

Can We Say Awkward?

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One of the things I love about Facebook is that at least once a day, if not more often, one of my friends shares something that truly cracks me up.  Smitty did it today when he shared the site Awkward Family Photos.  I swear you could spend hours on this site, but if you want just a taste check out the last picture on this page or the last one on this page or even the last two on this page.

I could go on but you get the point.

Update: Oh great googly moogly, you gotta love this one.  And someone better call the SPCA.

French or Ruby on Rails?

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Fred Wilson makes a great point about our schools today and it can best be summed up with this quote: 

If the Obama administration wants to really do something about jobs and retooling America for the 21st century, it would fund the development of great middle school programming curriculum. It would fund training teachers to teach that curriculum. It would get millions of kids writing code before they have their first date. That would change a lot of things.

Our experience has been that the computer classes at our kids' school focus on teaching students how to use basic programs like Word and Excel.  Sadly they don't do a great job of that and we, the parents, end up doing a lot of "tutoring" at home.   

I think our experience is the norm.  UNCG professor and economist Dave Ribar posted this piece about the College Board canceling the more stringent of their two AP computer science courses.  He also offers this quote: "The result of sporadic or skimpy computer science training is that a generation of teenagers great at using computers will be unlikely to play a role in the way computer technology shapes lives in the future, said Chris Stephenson, executive director of the New York-based Computer Science Teachers Association."

While I don't think French or Spanish should disappear from the school curriculum, I do think that we should get serious about teaching our kids computer science.  Put it this way: where do you think the jobs will be in 2020 or 2040?  Computer technology is one area of the economy that we can be pretty confident will continue to grow for the foreseeable future and it would serve us well to enable our kids to take advantage of it.  After all, these aren't burger-flipping jobs but desirable jobs as highlighted by a Bureau of Labor Statistics profile that Ribar cites:

In May 2008, median annual wages of wage-and-salary computer applications software engineers were $85,430. The middle 50 percent earned between $67,790 and $104,870. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $53,720, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $128,870.

What Would Vacation Be Without a 5:00 a.m. Wake Up? or On Traveling With Teenagers

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It's hard to complain about anything when you've been able to take a few days off and escape with the family to a semi-abandoned timeshare in the land of over-landscaped golf courses.  That said there's something very un-relaxing about spending those days ferrying around three teenagers who can't be bothered to see where they're going because they're sending text message number 8,423 of the day to their boyfriend, or playing game number 2,500 on their DS or simply going whatever place in their vacuous heads that teenagers go that gives them the glassy-eyed stare of a decade-long heroin addict.  Let's just say yesterday didn't provide a very Cleaver-like moment and I let the kids and everyone within a 20 mile radius know that I wasn't cool with it.

Let me be clear: I blew a gasket.  It wasn't an epic gasket-blowing, but it did involve threats of packing up and heading home a couple of days early.  It did include the time-tested "you have no clue how lucky you are that we're able to go on vacation" line that's been used by every parent for generations.  I even threw in the "you kids just don't appreciate what your Mom and I do for you" line.  I don't think the latter two statements had much of an effect, but I think the threat of a 7 hour drive with a pissed off Dad did have a sobering effect.  We ended up having a nice dinner.

And as always when I lose it I crashed early, had a fairly restless sleep and popped awake at some gawdawful early hour (5:00 a.m.).  At least I get to enjoy a quiet cup (or twelve) of coffee. 

Merry Christmas Eve everybody.  And yes, Mom, I do appreciate the irony of all this.